Ted Cruz Alleges Karl Rove Threatened Him and Made Ageist Remarks over Bush 41 Endorsement

It’s the Republican battle of the century: Sen. Ted Cruz versus Karl Rove.

In his forthcoming book, A Time for Truth, Republican presidential candidate Cruz alleged that long-time Bush confidant Rove threatened him over a received endorsement from George H.W. Bush due to concerns over how George W. Bush‘s top library donors would react.

The exchange happened in 2009 when Cruz ran for Texas Attorney General (he later abandoned the campaign when now-Gov. Greg Abbott decided to run for re-election).

As Cruz recounted in the book, he flew to the Bush compound in Maine to meet with the elderly ex-president and the pair immediately hit it off. Following a successful weekend of boating, socializing, and wearing Bush’s clothing (because he didn’t want to wear a suit on the open seas), Cruz returned home with a $1,000 donation and an endorsement.

This apparently angered Rove, who, as Cruz recalled, “was irate, demanding, ‘What in the hell do you think you are doing?!’”

Cruz continued to describe how “Texas donors were giving the Bushes tens of millions, including major donors who were supporting the Dallas state rep who wanted to run for attorney general,” and those donors “were now berating Karl.” Breitbart News were the first to report these excerpts.

The most controversial passage, however: “He suggested that the elder Bush was too old to have good judgment anymore. I was offended by that characterization and knew from my visit with 41 that it wasn’t remotely true.”

Cruz cashed the donation check, but relented on the endorsement: After receiving a text version of Bush 41’s endorsement, he told campaign staffers to dispose of it. “We didn’t want to anger Karl or 43. The former president’s office said he understood,” Cruz recalled.

What does Rove think of all this? In a Medium post, the Republican strategist hit back at Cruz:

My call to Mr. Cruz apparently didn’t offend him back then because he continued seeking my counsel about his political ambitions, specifically his 2012 bid for the U.S. Senate. One piece of advice I offered was that he should stop describing himself as the “next Marco Rubio,” since he did not have Senator Rubio’s outstanding legislative record of accomplishments as speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

And he outright denied the accusation that he ever called into question G.H.W. Bush’s mental faculties, among other charges:

Mr. Cruz’s account is wrong in other particulars, starting with an implication I would question the judgment of one of the finest men I have ever known, President Bush 41, whom I went to work for when I was 22 years old and have revered ever since.

When Mr. Cruz and I talked in 2009, I was not raising money for the Bush Library, nor was former President Bush 43 going to endorse some unnamed Dallas state representative for state attorney general, nor were any library donors “berating” me.

It doesn’t end there, however. Cruz released the full email chain as a rebuttal. Note how it does not contain Rove’s age-related remarks, but it does clearly show the strategist in distress over how Bush library donors would receive news of the Cruz endorsement. Read the full chain here.

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